The Radical Right and Climate Change

Party Competition and Wedge Issue Politics

  • Party competition is central to understanding policy outcomes
  • Parties compete on issue ownership (Bélanger and Meguid 2008) and entrepreneurship (de Vries and Hobolt 2020)
    • Issue owners are widely recognized as experts on the issue
    • Entrepreneurial parties seek to change the status quo by politicizing new issues

Climate Change as a Wedge Issue

What would a wedge issue strategy look like?

  1. Issue attention
    • RR parties increase salience of climate issues
  2. Adversarial positioning
    • RR parties take an oppositional stance on climate policy
  3. Mobilizing potential
    • A significant share of voters hold sceptical views of climate change policies

Expectations

  • Increase in salience of climate issues for radical right parties
  • RR parties will take an adversarial position on climate policy
  • A significant share of voters who do not already support the RR hold sceptical views

Research Design & Methods

  • ~500k Party Press Releases from 76 parties (2010-2022)
    • Includes over 50k press releases from radical right parties
  • European Social Survey data
  • UK and German Election Study Panel Data
  • Text analysis to measure salience and adversarial positioning

Party Press Releases

Results: Salience

Radical right parties are increasingly focusing on climate issues

Results: Adversarial Position

Radical right parties are uniquely oppositional on climate issues

Results: Mobilizing Potential

A significant share of voters across parties hold sceptical views

Vote Switching

Radical right parties are mobilizing voters

Discussion

  • Climate change is a wedge issue that divides mainstream coalitions
  • Radical right parties are increasingly politicizing climate change
    • Increasing salience
    • Taking adversarial positions
    • Mobilizing voters

How Can Mainstream Parties Respond?

  • Appeasement
    • Germany and UK: Accommodating radical right positions on climate change
    • Risk: Undermining climate policy and mainstream party credibility
  • Address the Distributional Consequences of Climate Policy
    • Socially fair climate action
    • Failure to address the costs for lower- and middle-income groups risks backlash
  • Communicate Climate Policy in Terms of Security and Sovereignty
    • Reframe climate action not as sacrifice, but as a protection of national economic and social interests to counter radical right narratives

Thank You!

References

Bélanger, Éric, and Bonnie M Meguid. 2008. “Issue Salience, Issue Ownership, and Issue-Based Vote Choice.” Electoral Studies 27 (3): 477–91.
de Vries and Hobolt. 2020. Political Entrepreneurs: The Rise of Challenger Parties in Europe. Princeton University Press.